[Deck] Battle of Wits(!)

[Jaynel]

So far this has been a blast to play, and I'm really looking forward to explaining all of my card choices after I get to the decklist.

Answers.dec
or
BOW Control

Manas (96):
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
4 City of Brass
10 Island
2 Swamp
2 Plains
1 Forest
1 Mountain
4 Tundra
4 Underground Sea
4 Volcanic Island
4 Tropical Island
3 Scrubland
2 Bayou
2 Plateau
2 Badlands
2 Savannah
2 Taiga
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Watery Grave
4 Breeding Pool
4 Steam Vents
3 Godless Shrine
4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Underground River

Acceleration (16):
4 Azorius Signet
4 Dimir Signet
4 Talisman of Dominance
4 Talisman of Progress

Tutor (40):
4 Brainstorm
3 Mystical Tutor
4 Impulse
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Intuition
4 Mystical Teachings
4 Gifts Ungiven
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Academy Rector
1 Enlightened Tutor
4 Sensei's Divining Top

Protection (27):
4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Stifle
4 Mana Leak
4 Rune Snag
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will

Removal (26):
3 Swords to Plowshares
4 Innocent Blood
3 Lightning Bolt
3 Diabolic Edict
4 Pyroclasm
4 Wrath of God
1 Fire/Ice
1 Echoing Truth
1 Disenchant
1 Rend Flesh
1 Evacuation

Enchantment Toolbox (15):
4 Battle of Wits
4 Sterling Grove
2 Control Magic
2 Pernicious Deed
1 Moat
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Sphere of Law

The Man Plan (16):
3 Buried Alive
3 Reanimate
3 Animate Dead
1 Show and Tell
3 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1 Bringer of the Black Dawn
1 Bringer of the Blue Dawn
1 Simic Sky Swallower

Utility/Random (14):
4 Cunning Wish
3 Recoup
4 Regrowth
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Mask of the Mimic
1 Dominate

Wishboard:
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Fire/Ice
1 Echoing Truth
1 Catalog
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Reclaim
1 Ebony Charm
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Trickbind
1 Krosan Grip
1 Wipe Away
1 Pulse of the Fields
1 Hide/Seek
1 Odds/Ends

The maindeck should come out to 250 cards, which I think is the optimal number for a competative Battle of Wits deck.

The basic gameplan of the deck is one of two options:

Find Gifts Ungiven -> Academy Rector, Reanimate, Cabal Therapy, Recoup/Regrowth (depends on color of mana available)

Get a Large Guy in the graveyard -> Reanimate/Animate Dead


First, lets start with the lands. The deck is U/B/W/r/g, so the lands I chose focused on those colors. All the blue duals, including the ones from Ravnica, plus U/B and U/W Ice Age painlands. A full suit of Onslaught fetchlands enables me to find any color, however, because some cards like Regrowth and Recoup are needed in Gifts Piles or general utility. City of Brass is generally good, and basics help against Wasteland. Signets and Talismans (also U/B/W) help speed up the deck.

You may have already noticed that the deck is largely based on instants. All of your tutors are incredibly redundant, which is excellent in a deck with 250 cards. You run Merchant Scroll, Mystical Tutor, and Mystical Teachings to help you find Gifts Ungiven or removal. Fact or Fiction helps get card advantage or drops cards in the yard. Brainstorm and Impulse are great cards to help you dig down further to find more tutors or bombs. Sensei's Divining Top acts as a pseudo Brainstorm and works well with 20 fetches. Stifling random effects is always good.

Though the deck can occationally Reanimate a turn 2 or 3 Akroma or get a Battle of Wits on the table by turn 5 without interference, the deck does need some protection for it's win conditions. You run 8 discard slots to pluck out enchantment removal or other impediments, and every good/decent counterspell to deal with threats. I'm pretty sure I run enough blue cards to support Force of Will.

Removal helps against fast aggro. A well timed Wrath or Pyroclasm can slow down Goblins enough to get a Rector on the table to fend off attacks or get Cunning Wish -> Pulse of the Fields online. Fire/Ice can be found with Merchant Scroll to 2-for-1. The 3-ofs (Swords to Plowshares, Diabolic Edict, and Lightning Bolt) are, in my opinion, the best instant speed removal, so one of each has been relocated to the board to be Wished for. Evacuation is the lone instant speed board sweeper that can be tutored for.

The enchantments I run help me in a variety of situations. Moat and Sphere of Law shuts down Goblins and Sligh, and Deed gets rid of troublesome permanents (only 2 because I run artifact based acceleration). Control Magic acts as pseudo removal and also adds to your threat capacity. Seal of Cleansing takes out randomness.

Plan B is animate a fatty. Not much to explain, you have your standard Reanimator chick, Akroma, and her wingman, SSS, to flip off the ugly removal that hits on the Angel of Wrath. The 2 Bringers can and usually will be hardcast using the alternate WUBRG cost, and help sway the game in your favor incredibly if left on the board for even one upkeep. Show and Tell will always drop something huge from your hand, be it Battle of Wits, Academy Rector, or a fatty. Whatever they put on the table can be dealt with.

Now for the utility and random cards. Cunning Wish is clearly great here. It falls within the instant speed tutoring and gives you tons of options with the sideboard. Regrowth and Recoup also shine in the Gifts piles, yet Recoup is kinda bad on its own because it can only get back limited cards: Merchant Scroll, Pyroclasm, Wrath of God, Regrowth, and discard.

The 3 random cards are Tormod's Crypt, Mask of the Mimic, and Dominate. Crypt is good, I guess, and can be found through Enlightened tutor maindeck or in the board. I'm satisfied with it. However, the other two cards are pretty useless. Mask of the Mimic is essentially an instant speed sacrifice outlet for Rector. I'm sure there are better cards that actually help here. Same with Dominate, I haven't been pleased once with it. It needs to be replaced with something else. Maybe a Gaea's Blessing to make Solidarity's head asplode.

The board has been solid. I haven't really used the split cards cards that much though. A counter might be worth considering. I feel that if I were to use a regular board (4/4/4/3 or 3/3/3/3/3) to help with certain matchups, I wouldn't see the cards ever or be able to find them. Utility answers with Cunning Wish has worked out well.

That's about it. Matchups with the Big 3 haven't been tested that sufficiently in order to give any win percentages.

This is basically casual and a blast to play on MWS. If someone wants to lend me the 10+ bucks needed to sleeve this whole thing up and some duals (Plateaus, Scrublands, Badlands and Savannahs), I will gladly bring this to a tournament.

Criticize away, and figure out some good cards to put in over Mask of the Mimic and Dominate.

[hi-val]

BOW can't be 5 colors and competitive. I'd cut Red and Green, both of which are unspectacular. Consider Grim Tutor and Brainspoil, the latter of which also tutors for Morphling and ALL SUN'S DAWN BABY.

To support FOW, you need ~90 blue cards. You also need 60 answers to Goblin Lackey on the first turn.

Also, do you feel that this deck has room for a 250th card? I feel like you have to play 249 or that 250th card really hurts your consistency. I can see running a 1-of that you can tutor for or draw into, but I don't know if I would risk my deck's consistency like that.

[ForceofWill]

adding a 250th card will barely affect your consistency.

With Planer Chaos you get some things for this deck. You want to run 8 wogs after all.

[Poron]

this can be just a fundeck come on...

how can you win vs a LD deck, a goblin, a solidarity?

imho this is the most expensive fun deck ever seen and more: not so fun really...

[Cavius The Great]

I agree with Poron. There's spells that win you the game that cost five mana such as Cadaverous Bloom, Haunting Echoes and Mirari's Wake. Why then, would I want to build a 250 card deck when they are better options out there?

[outsideangel]

I agree with Poron. There's spells that win you the game that cost five mana such as Cadaverous Bloom, Haunting Echoes and Mirari's Wake. Why then, would I want to build a 250 card deck when they are better options out there?

Because everyone knows that the number of cards in your deck directly relates to the size of your genitalia.

On the decklist, I'd like to see Lotus Petal in there somewhere. Since you're using all 5 colors, they act as mana fixing and acceleration. Chromatic Sphere/Star could also help in the mana fixing department and help but a dent (albeit a small one) in the deck. Mishra's Bauble again let's you play more cards while playing less, and combines nicely with your fetchland suite. Land Grant acts as sort of a "virtual fetchland" i.e. an additional shuffle effect to combine with Brainstorm, Top, or Bauble. I'm surprised Gemstone Mine isn't included in the mana base.

As hi-val noted, though, I think you can safetly drop either red or green, especially when Damnation becomes playable. Going down to four colors and adding more rainbow sources should make your mana base a bit more stable. I would probably drop red, upping the Pernicious Deed count, and looking at Life from the Loam as a possibile singleton.

Also, is the Reanimator plan really that strong? Maybe a better backup plan is in order. Confinement lock maybe?

[despo]

I also agree that you can keep your colors to U/B/W, if you really want graveyard recursion you could try recall.

Why only one enlightened tutor mainboard? If you want to find your battle of wits in a deck of 250 cards, you better run the best tutor you can find as much as possible.

Since you will probably need filler: perhaps golden wish/death wish and one battle of wits sideboard, so you can virtually up your number of battle of wits.

[Watcher487]

Personally I would feature Blue/Black/Green in this deck.

Green gives you alot of control features that could be alot better a bigger build. Regrowth, Constant Mists, Exploration, Purtify, Eternal Witness, Life from the Loam.

Black has a billion pieces of spot/sacrifice removal also with Planar Chaos it also gives you Damnation to go with Infest and Decree of Pain. Blue has all your card drawing and countermagic. And Green is your accell and control.

My next suggestion is to not entirely drop White and Red. But the thing you really want to do is move it down to like 4-5 singletons or 10 cards at most. Rainbow lands are a must, at least play City of Brass and Gemstone Mine. Signets and Talismans do some important accelerating but you need all the early mana you can get to prevent Goblins from just outright owning you.

Anyway outsideangel is correct in saying that Reanimator back-up plan is the wrong way to go.

Also, (this is probably the most important reason why I'm posting in this thread) the correct optimal number for Battle of Wits is 242 for a draw heavy deck, while for a tutor heavy deck should be around 230.

[Cavius The Great]

Because everyone knows that the number of cards in your deck directly relates to the size of your genitalia.

Well in that case, I should be playing with a 900 card deck. :wink:

[Mirrislegend]

This deck doesnt make any sense at all

1) You cant have a toolbox in a 250 card deck, with only 5 tutors
2) Why an enchantment toolbox? When you tutor for an enchantment, it should be BoW ftw. And as a result, that entire enchantment toolbox is win-more
3) While Cunning Wish has more flexibility, Burning Wish is stronger. This also means you'll have to maindeck all that good stuff that you relegated to the SB and a few 1ofs MD (Fire/Ice, Echoing Truth, Disenchant).
4) Being a big deck and being all 5 colors means you really have no reasons not to be running full sets of some of the format's greatest cards. 3 StP? 3 Lightning Bolts? 2 Pernicious Deed?

This deck needs to be pared down a goodly deal. I think all those slots devoted to the reanimator plan would be better used to really take control of the game, and win off of solely BoW. Also, personally, I'd play a lot more artifacts and cantrips, as it helps smooth out everything in the end.

[Cavius The Great]

What about running 4 Golden Wish and putting a single Battle of Wits in the SB? That might work.

[Complete_Jank]

1 Enlighten Tutor???

Run Green/White/Blue and splash Black.

Build other combos into the deck like illusions donate, and run Holistic Wisdom and Mirarri's Wake. (SP?)